OBSOLESCENCE AND PLEASURE: ELEMENTS FOR A CONTEMPORARY THEORY OF ALIENATION / OBSOLESCÊNCIA E PRAZER: ELEMENTOS PARA UMA TEORIA CONTEMPORÂNEA DA ALIENAÇÃO

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2009

RESUMO

This work aims to study contemporary alienation on the basis of two of its elements: obsolescence and pleasure. The first originates from the conditions to which are submitted not only the produced commodities, but also the worker, in face of the abolishment of worker¿s rights legislation operated by flexible accumulation. It is possible to suggest that the advent of this new way of managing labour power intensified both discontent and the alienating conditions experimented by workers who are gradually being transformed from durable commodities, possessing rights and securities, into consumable, easily replaceable commodities, increasingly bereft of the afore-mentioned rights and securities. However, this intensification of discontent and alienation does not result immediately in an intensification of displeasure, given that consumption can be seen to be on the rise nowadays. This is made possible, in part, by the aesthetics of the commodity (packaging and marketing devices), whose only aim is the incessant production of consumerist desires for an increasingly faster reproduction of the commodity circle. Therefore, it is possible to think of alienation as being a consequence of flexible accumulation. The flexible alienation that thus arises is, on its turn, an effect not only of the lack of stability as concerns the conditions of work and the lack of durability of commodities, but also of the incredibly flexible articulation between its own discontent and what apparently contradicts it: pleasure, the packaging that obscures and dulls the specific discontent that characterises contemporary alienation.

ASSUNTO(S)

pleasure alienacao alienation prazer

ACESSO AO ARTIGO

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